My Tibet Train Journey

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It’s just revealed that train ticket purchase in China isn’t as convenient as imagined. One night last year after supper, I browsed some web pages offering Tibet trip service while waiting for my son to come back from work. Actually I was totally a layman on Tibet trip, but some splendid pictures attracted my attention especially those about the spectacular scenery along Qing-Tibet railway. So one idea came up immediately that I’d like to travel to Tibet from Washington with my son next month when we both had a half month holiday once in a blue moon.

I was informed that the construction of Qing-Tibet railway was ever suspended some years ago due to technology deficiency. However, it was really exciting that this project had been finished and tourists all over the world had the chance to get a train ride—more importantly, appreciating the charming scenery on the train is the key point. Then I began to search train tickets to Tibet and sent some inquiries to a few travel agents in China and Tibet doing Tibet trip business. Unfortunately I also got a few responses that a train ride from Tibet to other Chinese cities are available while those from Beijing, Shanghai or Chengdu to Tibet seemed to be unavailable because I actually prefer to book first class train berths (Chinese people say soft sleepers)—only 4 passengers sleep in a cabin. Interminable explanations from travel agencies about train ticket purchase in China got me annoyed. Perhaps, I could only dream of taking a train to Tibet at present.

One thing made me shine all of a sudden—CITS tibet travel(website is www.tibettravel.org) informed me through email that they were able to book Beijing-Lhasa soft sleeper berths for me—there’s light at the end of the tunnel. My plan to travel to Tibet by train with my son finally came true in this summer. I can clearly remember we boarded train T27 at around 21:20 at West Beijing Train Station. More fortunately, we got two lower beds which were convenient for us get in and out from the bed.

The other two passengers in our cabin was a couple about 40 years old. They came from Finland and are employees for Nokia and it was indeed a coincidence we all got soft sleeper train tickets through CITS Tibet Travel—I had to admit some people were as lucky as we were.

I walked the entire train and noticed the only difference between soft sleeping berths and hard ones is that the former has only 4 beds while the latter is equipped with 6 in a cabin. However the tiny difference means a lot to me because we didn’t want to get crowded in a cabin where there are 6 people. Moreover, it was really convenient for us to get down to the floor and appreciate the plateau scenery. We could feel the train ascending along the altitude once it drove into Xi’ning where the sublime vision got started to show.

We got surrounded by mountains covered with white snow and the sky turned sapphire quite unlike the sky in Beijing and some other cities in China. I understand that the ultraviolet on plateau areas is really strong when sapphire sky shows up. Fortunately my son prepared a bottle of sun block before taking the trip so that we could avoid getting tanned when we were in Tibet.

My son also reassured me that we wouldn’t have to worry about the altitude sickness as he noticed some pores on the ceiling of the train where oxygen was provided to the passengers. So it remained a problem that we had to cope with the over 3,000 meter altitude after getting off the train tomorrow evening simply because the train compartments were full of oxygen; what’s more the soft sleeping beds brought about great leisure.

It seemed that one stewardess was attractive to my son since he kept looking in her direction while the similar case rarely happened when we were in our hometown—perhaps a local Tibetan girl would be more suitable for him. On the other hand, it might be the great hospitality of the girl that took his attention as she spoke really good English after offering us a cup of tea. I had to admit her smiling was totally ravishing—the same with the charming scenery.

We finally arrived in Lhasa train station after 44 hours on train. The train station was one of the biggest and the most extravagant I have ever seen in my life. I though Tibet was a remote place where nothing modernized was available. To my amazement, Lhasa train station was swarmed with tourists and I could see some people came from Europe and America. Later we met our local Tibetan travel guide Lotse , he took us into the 4WD land cruiser and 40 minutes later we got to our hotel near prosperous Barkhor Street.

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